Northampton graduate picked to design mobile phone start-up screen

Peter Crawley was chosen to design a start-up sequence for Motorola’s mobile handsets after his work caught the eye of a fellow Northampton graduate, who works for the telecoms giant.He specialises in ‘stitched illustrations’, in which he hand-pierces paper with a pin, and then stitches it with a needle and thread.Peter, who graduated from the Product Design course in 2006, first hit upon his stitched illustration concept following a US road trip with four fellow Northampton graduates in 2008.As he developed his work, he started getting noticed by creative agencies, but it was a call from his old uni friend and fellow US road tripper, Chris Clare, that led to his stitched illustrations going global.

“Chris ended up working at Motorola in San Francisco. We had wanted to work together for a while and when he had a brief for a mobile phone start-up sequence that needed to look organic and not technical he put my name forward," he said.“It was an amazing project and knowing millions of people will have seen it across the world is fantastic.”Now head of design at Tensator Group, and with agency experience working for clients including Porsche and London 2012 Olympics, Peter also works as an independent designer. His clients have included British Airways, Elle Decoration, Harvey Nichols, Liberty London, Neiman Marcus, Saatchi & Saatchi, Vanity Fair and Wired.

He feels his time on the BSc Product Design course gave him the perfect grounding for success in the creative industries.

“The course had a great mix of creative, technical and business elements,” said Peter. “The business side of design is often overlooked, but it is becoming more and more critical in the workplace - whether that be for your own self-promotion, landing a job or running a business and everything in between. We also touched on intellectual property, again, something that all creatives should be aware of.”